Stephen Schofield
"Stephen Schofield" by Barbara Isherwood, Winter 2006, p. 93
Stephen Schofield’s exhibition “Sugar on the floor” turns viewer into voyeur, offering a peek into the private world of a young man and his cat. The introspective, eccentric and even silly moments in an outwardly unexceptional life are revealed through tableaux featuring unglazed ceramic figures clothed in castoffs from a mall brat’s closet.
Schofield subverts the startling realism of his figures by making them fractions of life-size. The miniature scale creates a comfortable distance from which to observe the actions of his protagonist, who appears lost in the solipsistic self-absorption of youth. In his artist’s statement, Schofield locates the action in a suburban basement, a place he himself recalls as a site of solitary teen dreams and experiment. The bare-bones accommodation is minimally suggested by glass and metal platforms that act as stages for antics that are playful, innocent and erotic. Schofield’s young buck twists himself into yogic contortions, exalting in his youthful flexibility and displaying the adolescent’s fascination with his own developing body. Baggins, a figure in candy-striped pajama bottoms, does an ass-over-heels yoga pose, while its nearby counterpart Walnut raises his naked lower body high up in the air in a pose that would be decidedly come-hither if we existed in his world. This overt sexuality is balanced by the whimsical clowning of Teapot and Tail too, who wears his T-shirt as pants, or his neighbour, who sports a pair of briefs as a hat, reminding us of the absurd things we all do when no one’s looking. Nearby, the cat washes her privates, echoing the uninhibited sensual behaviour of her human companions.
Drunken Angel reveals the aftermath of all this exuberance: a figure reclines languidly in a butterfly chair, limp with exhaustion or teenage ennui. His feline friend, meanwhile, is a bundle of energy, frozen in mid-spin with limbs exploding outward like a crazed cartoon cat.
Schofield moves into a more indefinable zone in his drawings. Here, furniture appears to float through rooms that arise from half-remembered dreams. In His Patchouli a bunch of scarlet balloons levitates toward an acoustic-tile ceiling while a candelabrum emits paisley flames against a brick-red wall. In the corner sits an object that could be a lamp or a pile of eggs or pebbles. This is a magical place, where identities shift through the power of imagination and the optimism of childhood is eternal.
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
